Pacifying Geordie was not eas

　　She continued to sit helplessly beside the hall-table, the tearsrunning down her cheeks. The appearance of the bonne arousedher. Her youngest charge, Geordie, had been feverish for a dayor two; he was better, but still confined to the nursery, and hehad heard Susy unlock the house-door, and could not imagine whyshe had not come straight up to him. He now began to manifesthis indignation in a series of racking howls, and Susy, shakenout of her trance, dropped her cloak and umbrella and hurriedup.
　　"Oh, that child!" she groaned.
　　Under the Fulmer roof there was little time or space for theindulgence of private sorrows. From morning till night therewas always some immediate practical demand on one's attention;and Susy was beginning to see how, in contracted households,children may play a part less romantic but not less useful thanthat assigned to them in fiction, through the mere fact ofgiving their parents no leisure to dwell on irremediablegrievances. Though her own apprenticeship to family life hadbeen so short, she had already acquired the knack of rapidmental readjustment, and as she hurried up to the nursery herprivate cares were dispelled by a dozen problems of temperature,diet and medicine.
　　Such readjustment was of course only momentary; yet each time ithappened it seemed to give her more firmness and flexibility oftemper. "What a child I was myself six months ago!" shethought, wondering that Nick's influence, and the tragedy oftheir parting, should have done less to mature and steady herthan these few weeks in a house full of children.
　　Pacifying Geordie was not easy, for he had long since learned touse his grievances as a pretext for keeping the offender at hisbeck with a continuous supply of stories, songs and games.
　　"You'd better be careful never to put yourself in the wrong withGeordie," the astute Junie had warned Susy at the outset,"because he's got such a memory, and he won't make it up withyou till you've told him every fairy-tale he's ever heardbefore."But on this occasion, as soon as he saw her, Geordie'sindignation melted. She was still in the doorway, compunctious,abject and racking her dazed brain for his favourite stories,when she saw, by the smoothing out of his mouth and the suddenserenity of his eyes, that he was going to give her thedelicious but not wholly reassuring shock of being a good boy.
　　Thoughtfully he examined her face as she knelt down beside thecot; then he poked out a finger and pressed it on her tearfulcheek.
　　"Poor Susy got a pain too," he said, putting his arms about her;and as she hugged him close, he added philosophically: "TellGeordie a new story, darling, and you'll forget all about it."